How do the courts differentiate between witnesses who are truthful vs those who are lying? How do parole boards evaluate whether someone repents?
In such extreme cases especially, it wouldn't be a judge making their mind up after a two-minute statement from a convict. The hearing will have prison personnel testifying about years of interaction with the person. There will be psychologists providing their perspective. There could be a repeated psychiatric evaluation.
Can that process be fooled? Certainly, as there exists no certain way to tell whether someone is being truthful. But successfully faking your way out of a continued sentence requires more than putting on a convincing act for a few hearings.
Nobody in the country thinks it's at all a possibility for the foreseeable future. He won't be released - the man is behind the deadliest peacetime crime in Norway. Even if he sincerely repents at some point, he'll have to spend many more years behind the bars with perfect behavior for a release to be considered.
If he repents the murders, if he renounces his ideology, and if he spends a couple decades as a repentful man would, he will, just maybe, get released when he's old, frail and not expected to live long.
